 Hello, thank you all for hanging around and not disappearing into Amsterdam this afternoon My name's Jamie. I'm here to talk about internet scale product visualization and customization I Work for a company in the UK called lightning technology. We're based in Portsmouth on the very very south coast of the country We offer websites that deliver our clients solutions to allow their customers to create a large range of photo gift products Literally anything you can put a photo on it We have probably done it from normal things like canvases Books all the stuff you expect through to acrylic blocks where people are firing lasers in the middle to make a three-dimensional variation of your image My team I'm very very fortunate to work with a incredibly talented and creative team Within my department We've got two-dimensional artists three-dimensional artists scripting capability We've sit as part of our entire company of about 90 people. We've got web developers system engineers It's a fairly large operation My team though provide static on-demand and interactive visuals and things like JPEGs or Occasionally in certain songs it's GLTF files we get to but I'll get to that later It's an in-house developed solution We currently focus on providing for web and M web and in the past We've worked on app and also in store touchscreen kiosks The company was pretty much founded on touchscreen kiosks But like everyone in the world. We're really prioritizing web at the moment Here's a couple of examples of the sites we work with and we run You may have heard of Walmart if anyone's from the States, you will definitely have heard of Walmart in the UK we work with as the photo and Also Costco photo in the UK These are the kind of main pages of the sites both of these feature either a combination of photography and 3d renders Mainly the 3d renders as the photo Costco and nearly all 3d render The Walmart ones father. It's a more balanced mix We work with our in-house team and we also use work provided to us by designers in the States The challenge to us Working with clients like that they're very big clients and anyone who's worked in retail will tell you retailers are demanding They have to meet what their customer wants and we hear all their customers. We're consumers our tastes change rapidly and We're very picky. We spend our money in limited places and we're careful about what we do Customers will want to define the camera angle the lens type product positions They want to update the content constantly to keep things fresh as tastes change. We need to change with it Everything we do needs to be repeatable and it's needed now The customers have to see every product. They're choosing they need to be able to visualize the edits they make as the products we deal with our custom and They need everything to look the same when it arrives in their door as it does when they've seen it on site Traditional solutions involve printing a sample posting the sample Photographing photoshopping that then uploading. It was a long process particularly printing Quite wasteful, you know the problems with the environment if you needed to make a change Perhaps you'd have to start again go right the way back to the start if you needed to do it for designs The whole process would either be repeat repeat repeat of the whole thing or you'd end up needing to kind of Photoshop and maybe be running Photoshop actions and things like that We decided because of our specific problems of the volume of designs we have to do we're talking Yeah, thousand products hundred designs Different layouts within those some massive massive problem. So we chose to use blender The overall process we use Won't be much different to anything else anyone else is doing We start modeling move to shading rendering and compositing rendering and compositing for us is quite a closely knitted Pipeline we they're kind of they're very very closely linked and we do it in a two-stage process and We make extensive use of linders command line interface Modeling we will use the physical samples as a base If any of the fillers are listening Apologies, we do rip everything apart the minute we get it We want to see how it's built We have to measure things to the point where down to the millimetre or the temp for the mill depending on the size of the product We will get everything down there We need to know where the printing starts where the printing stops exactly how it wraps around We'll be working out the bevels and everything we physically recreate everything the same within a blender product While we're doing that we do have to make variations We'll keep everything as simple as we can we like to keep things live where we can We'll use modifiers and subtips of very popular ones for us And if possible, we'll use pinning and drivers We've got system that works where we pin we kind of put hooks in onto a single plane We then have a separate python script that runs. We just type in the data the script runs 40 canvases can be generated in 30 seconds by a computer and then sent off to render Rather than you know an hour or two for each person to make those changes UV mapping You'll see here. These are the actual print requirements that need to go to the Fuffilla So our UV maps we have to be very very careful with how we do it We have to meet the specification that's given to us by the Fuffilla We can't rely on kind of automatic up out mapping. We kind of have to do it ourselves This canvas here. We can't have any stretching on there I've said no stretching unless the product stretch. This is a purse It's a slightly neoprene purse we actually have to kind of take into account how it will stretch and We want to show the customer how it will look to them once it's in the final state and then the output We give maybe in so that when it stretches We keep everything as flexible and we try and maintain a balance all the way through Because our products can vary so widely Shading we will use a combination of procedural and image Depending on the product certain products we would use images PBR based materials We'll usually will combine some kind of procedural element just because we don't want Patterns to be looking repeatable. We need things to say they look real So we will be hacking in little variations as we go through just to keep the thing looking real Cycles EV mostly depending on the product majority of the time we use cycles at this stage So then we will bake down to EV from cycles at certain points We don't use color during this first stage. I'll come more to that later Lighting and camera will of course be using HDRI lights We'll set up a basic scene and then for this model here We've actually didn't have quite the spotlights we wanted so we added in a little extra one to catch the reflection there This is a sequined cushion We've added some extra lights here Particle system was used extensively on this product. Every single one of these sequins is real On times we will put in extra objects for reflections. We're actually trying to model the the look and feel that people expect on a photo website which can actually Slightly differ from the 100% realistic model We're working towards the expectation that the customer has when they look on a shelf We all know that when we look in the shelves of a store on the internet It's been photoshopped We're working towards the photoshopped photo of the real thing rather than the actual real thing a lot of the time It could be a quite careful balance We'll follow guidelines so once we've set a guideline for a certain product We'll make sure that all the products we do fit into that so that when they sit on the same page Everything looks the same and consistency the rendering stage We make extensive use of the open EXR multi-layer format We turn on a whole bunch of extra layers over here And we split up into a dual stage process the first stage will render things out with a grayscale and We don't actually use any of the kind of target imagery that a customer would be taking So the main things we do are things like you know family gifts or there be designs around that We wouldn't put any of the photos in in this stage was where we're rendering in cycles We keep it grayscale at this point and As a couple times we try and strike a balance between the real view and the expected you Certain points will emphasize extra bits in the rendering we may go back to the material Increase the bump maps so it looks a bit more bumpy in the final sizing We may need to reduce things because it's looking too bumpy even though it looks exactly like the product We're trying to make it so it matches what the people want it to sell us Compositing this is a wonderful node setup one of my team pulled out to us All the way through the compositing stage We actually what we start with is the original render that came from cycles our first stage We'll kind of come through we add two stages add the indirect and direct light Multiply by the color and then begin to combine everything at this point We really are searching for optimizations the sheer number of images that we create We actually use every trick we possibly can in the book to get the render stage down at this point We won't be rendering any reflections. We'll just duplicate the model Flip it on the Z axis and put it back in we've stolen all the tricks we can from them You know games like Duke Nukem in the past. We're not doing things like putting in bump maps We'll actually use composite in a bump map from the original EXR bacon. We'll just use a slight displacement At this point, we're not rendering any lighting in this stage. This is our sort of stage two. We'll actually use blender internal We're probably the one of the biggest users of that over a few years ago Very sad to see it go but Evie has gotten quick enough that we're able to use it as a replacement. I do still love blender internal Once we've done those render stages That's the point where we would begin to put the actual customer type photo in or a design That's been provided to us by someone in the in the US or a UK designer We don't want to open blender as quick as it is opening it We don't even want to do that the volume of works too much to allow it So we actually use command line interface at this point We've got a set of bash bash scripts originally they were since replaced by Python scripts The Python thing allowed us more flexibility and we then since learned a lot doing the 3d optimizations we were able to kind of go back and apply all of those learnings to Some of the 2d work we do so we process things in 2d using image of magic Open CV and then the Python script will fire out and ask blender to run the render Puts everything together in the correct folder structure that's needed and then we process that and upload and build These are what we call on-site shelf pages These are basically examples of the kind of renders we produce On the left here. This is one of our drinkware shelving down the bottom. These are different Designs placed on the same product Upload your designs very popular It's kind of a way for encouraging people to do their own their own designing and upload those and artists can start using the site But as you can see we've got the exact same kind of main model, but with different images placed on them Similarly on this side, these are a slightly different type of model not so kind of cleaning them or fabricate all of these renders in the final stage are Not one hour renders. They're not eight hour renders four days. We've done that work at this stage Everything we're rendering is running in about point eight of a second including the composite It allows us to deliver the volume we need It was actually so quick what we were doing there allowed us to use it live on-site Hot Rod is a service that we We named we developed it While one of the one of the directors was in the states driving around in a hot rod So we invented this crazy background in just because he was in a hot rod at the time I think it's hyper optimized threaded render on demand Really shoehorned that in What happened there though was the customer would be on our website working in our builder stage They would finish their product and they'd click the preview button We would render the exact output that would be going to the filler to actually print onto the item we then sent that to a instance of blender running in the cloud and Blender would render that in point eight of a second send it back to the customer and they were able to see Exactly the same kind of quality. We were showing them when they were purchasing the item. They were able to see it in their previews We've since begun using the GLTF exports and thank you so much to the chronos group It's made life so much easier. I spent many many hours Without GLTF years ago using the original 3JS format and GLTF has made the whole pipeline so much easier Absolutely brilliant, but we're now able to give customers a live preview where they can actually rotate the product zoom in You can see the bump mapping on the canvas. You can see reflections on shiny items like ceramic marks The reason we did this These are this on the right are the kind of previews that you would have had in the past It's just like a the image is actually just flat and then it's kind of composited on with an overlay just to show that You know the idea is that the canvas would go around that round the side what we're now showing customers Is these kind of things so you can actually see that your image is bending around the outside of the canvas there You're seeing all the bump maps on The reason we're doing all of this and we've gone to all this effort is showing this Dropping around the side of the canvas is massively important if someone doesn't realize that they're doing that while they're creating the product They get it in the mail Everything we do is focused on kind of helping people to create and cherish memories If it's a photograph of a loved one the last thing you want of that relative or the you know The relative you've just lost or your newborn baby You don't want their eyes poking around the side of the canvas you want them front and center all of this work is really now about Visualizing that so they the customer knows they need to put the image there. They can see exactly what they want They get a better experience. We get fewer returns. There's less sort of Renew to actually people breaking things throwing stuff in the bin that there are better There's no bad reviews on the site saying I got this and it just looks like absolute trash other uses These images here what we call lifestyle images We use splendor to render these these are actually done fully in cycles We don't need to go to that full kind of two-stage render process We'll just do these in cycles. These are one-off ones that use repeatedly on the site We use these as kind of the one with the prints We're showing a kind of real creative use of prints giving parents maybe the idea that are you know You can cut these out as a fun activity with the kids on holidays and things like that really we're selling the kind of the dream of Home ownership and buying into that of you know making your house the perfect place and how photo is part of taking that Feeling of turning a house and making into a home and fitting photo in Google we also do pay-per-click adverts We can actually resize any of these very very quickly We can set off a render that will just mean that we can put custom images in Google searches tracking on a keyword We can say it's a keyword comes through and someone's putting football We can put the football image in there and target there just to help kind of engage the user Search-wise we've also used these for models for all or rented reality purposes GTF format allows you to very quickly take something display it on a phone In a VR headset anything like that Results-wise we have rendered over 1 million individual images over the past seven years We have 800 plus gltf models being served on our website At Christmas For our peak season the site model thanks to our system engineering teams and people like that that are making coded optimizations We're going through 500 orders a minute In this in the states we've were created over 5,000 blender files over the last few years and at Christmas We will be taking over two million dollars a day in the US What's next for us? We are always looking for exciting new challenges My company are always looking for new technical partners If anyone here happens to run a big supermarket on the level of Walmart Please do come and have a chat my boss will fly out and take you to dinner somewhere very nice So we're looking you know the things we can do fully 3d product cost Customization is possible this image here is just an AR one I took a picture just in my living room put that on my phone And it's perfectly possible for us to show customers the thing on their wall They can see that that eight by eight canvas is only this big. It's not going to fill up the space They can also see that what they've ordered is way too big for their wall So there's options for kind of further increasing customer satisfaction, but also for upsell for businesses Stuff we're not necessarily doing but I do think is quite interesting that's out there with 3d work I'm going to mispronounce this the Michaela is a Brazilian influencer that is entirely generated in 3d software So much is happening in the world of 3d and Blender is a big part of that. I believe the character is created in blender, but they've got an influencer and the same The same benefits that we view 3d technology for have applied there a Robot or a 3d character is Repeatable it does not make mistakes. It does the same thing every time Contact-wise I'm around the rest of the day. I know there's not long left But if you want to come and say hello say hello, I am an absolute huge nerd I will talk to you about anything nerdy you want I will also talk about work if you'd like to talk about that and this is me on LinkedIn If you give me a shout on there if you don't want to talk to the anyone else at the company, I can put you in touch It's just a real sort of big happy family. I've got a great team and we're always happy to talk and help Thank you